The Internet looks worse and worse

More and more people are backing off from the Internet, frightened of cybercrime, privacy violations and very valid fears about the ever-more-glaring inadequacies of cybersecurity.

The Guardian reported: “When cybersecurity professionals converged in Las Vegas last week to expose vulnerabilities and swap hacking techniques at Black Hat and Defcon, a consistent theme emerged: The Internet is broken, and if we don’t do something soon, we risk permanent damage to our economy.”

“Half of all Americans are backing away from the net due to fears regarding security and privacy,” longtime tech security guru Dan Kaminsky said in his Black Hat keynote speech, citing a July 2015 study by the {U.S.} National Telecommunications and Information Administration.

“We need to go ahead and get the Internet fixed or risk losing this engine of beauty.”

Meanwhile, The Guardian reports: “The online crooks’ weapon of choice: crypto-ransomware, which encrypts all the data files on a user’s machine, making them inaccessible. The malware, which accounts for nearly 60% of all infections, according to research firm Malwarebytes, then displays a screen demanding hundreds of dollars. If victims don’t pay up in time, the files are destroyed.

“’Over the last few years attackers realized that instead of going through these elaborate hacks – phishing for passwords, breaking into accounts, stealing information, and then selling the data on the internet’s black market for pennies per record – they could simply target individuals and businesses and treat them like an ATM,’ says Brian Beyer, CEO and founder of enterprise security firm Red Canary.”